Ángel Collado
Seeking the economic debate and ignoring the competition from the right (Vox) are the two bets of the president of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to promote himself as an alternative to the government of Pedro Sánchez.
In the PP, they are convinced that the fundamental trump card they have to return to power in the new times of crisis is to appeal to their record of good management. Turning around a country in recession or on the verge of bankruptcy, as José María Aznar did in 1996-2004 and Mariano Rajoy did in 2011-2018, are the benchmarks of Feijóo’s attempt to win the next elections against a paralysed left-wing government that prefers ideological struggle above all else.
The leader of the Popular Party is making clear the change of script with respect to his predecessor, Pablo Casado, and will make his debut this week in his parliamentary career as head of the opposition with an attempt to open this fundamental economic debate. And he will do so to talk about the most basic concerns of citizens, those of the cost of living.
“Does the President of the Government consider that his government is up to the task of meeting the needs of Spanish families? This is the first question that Feijóo will ask Sánchez in his first plenary session of control of the Executive, specifically this Tuesday in the Senate.
The PP president once headed Spain’s first state-owned company, Correos, and also the former Insalud, the national health system as a whole before it was broken up into autonomous regions. He was then president of the Xunta de Galicia for 13 years. He has more management experience in the public sector than half of Pedro Sánchez’s cabinet, including its head.
With this background, and in view of the government’s management of the pandemic and the laxity with which it is now dealing with the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine, Feijóo wants to talk about the consequences of inflation, which shot up to 8.7 percent in May, and the incessant rise in energy prices.
The head of the opposition wants to take advantage of the mini-debate with Sánchez in the Senate to sell his economic alternative, basically tax cuts, as opposed to the patches announced by the government that never arrive, as in the case of electricity, or are surpassed by the market, as in the case of direct subsidies for petrol consumption.
The commitment to the economic debate is accompanied by the determination of the current PP leadership not to make the mistakes of the Casado era, such as getting entangled in relations with Vox.
Feijóo does not fall for the moment into disqualifying his adversary, even if he is one, nor into rapprochement. He is distancing himself from moderation and government experience, especially economic experience, in the face of an extreme right that is unprecedented in positions of responsibility in any sphere of the state and even lacks an economic programme.
The Popular Party is contesting the next election, the regional elections in Andalusia on the 19th, with the acknowledged challenge of governing the regional government without Vox. The head of the Executive is content with the opposite, with the PP candidate, Juan Manuel Moreno, being forced to make a pact with Santiago Abascal’s party, headed for the occasion by Macarena Olona.
The President of the Government needs to feed the message of fear of such an agreement on the right in order to mobilise the more left-wing electorate in his favour. The PSOE’s argument did not work in the regional elections in Madrid a year ago or in Castilla y León last February, but it is back again. The Moncloa Palace is now trying to halt Feijóo’s advance in the polls as a moderate alternative with an image of a solvent manager in the face of a social-communist government on the decline.
Hence the harassment by socialist leaders and the government media for the PP president to say whether or not his party will make a pact with Vox. Feijóo is handling the issue without making any statements, aware that his best option for the coming weeks is to manage ambiguity, a proven skill among Galician politicians.
In the PP they are beginning to think that, if Sánchez manages to make the PSOE’s most loyal voters fear Vox, it is possible that some thousands of votes from the moderate left will go to Moreno, precisely so that the popular candidate does not need the help of the extreme right. This would be his trump card to get rid of Vox.
